This link has been bookmarked by 3 people . It was first bookmarked on 09 Sep 2007, by someone privately.
-
01 May 08
-
Dawkins is horrified that 25% of the British public has some belief in astrology – more than in any one established religion – and that more newspaper column inches are devoted to horoscopes than to science.
-
Dawkins says of the mediums: “These are people making money out of others’ grief.” He is unwilling to see much moral difference between show business types who perform in front of an audience for profit and the spiritualist leaders who conduct essentially similar “services” in so-called churches.
-
But what annoys him most is the people who take chunks of scientific language and blend it into “their own mumbo-jumbo”. A woman in Glastonbury (where else?) claimed to have “altered his DNA” back to its original “Atlantean” structure by inserting the “missing triangles”.
-
Could it simply be that modern science is too hard for most people, and that superstition and religion have always been a way in which the wonders and vicissitudes of the natural world have been made accessible to the masses? I can see it does not come easy for Dawkins to sympathise with the truly ignorant.
-
But he has more scorn for the likes of Deepak Cho-pra, the Indian who has written bestsellers with titles such as Quantum Healing, which Dawkins says suggest some spurious linkage between spirituality and cutting edge science.
-
As Dawkins says: “There might be bad scientists, but that does not mean the methodology of science is bad.” For him the acid test is forever and always: “Test it!”
-
“I say to doctors who use homeopathy: if you can identify this you’d have discovered a whole new force in physics. Either there is no effect, in which case you shouldn’t be charging people money, or there is an effect, in which case you should prove it and win the Nobel prize.”
-
Arthur C Clarke’s Third Law, “any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
-
Dawkins doesn’t want to ban religion – “as long as it’s done between consenting adults in private”, he adds only half jokingly.
-
-
11 Aug 07
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.